I M M O B I L I S M | a labor of love lost and found (2010-2020)

I wrote these words a long time ago.

The tramway, “inaugurated with great pomp on the Sultan’s birthday on January 9, 1907” (Hanssen, 1998: 55) was presented to the Beirutis as a symbol of imperial power, like all new infrastructural projects in the city. Its construction led to the widening and realignment of streets along its route, and its popularity soon posed a threat to coach drivers, “who until then had conducted the mainstay of public transportation in Beirut” (Hanssen, 1998: 55).

The MoPWT-DGMLT proposal, which was still under discussion amongst policymakers when I spoke with Kayssi, seems starkly more accommodating of informality than the urban imaginaries of the transport activists I spoke with. Though it arguably underestimates the fierceness of competition within the informal system over some bus routes (more on this below), elements within the plan, like the creation of physical bus stops, fit into the kind of practical policy aspirations I heard from route operators in Dora (George, personal communication, January 13, 2013). Yet, as striking as this level of practicality and recognition from a policymaker may be, the main thrust of the proposal is still the strengthening of the ability of the state to control the transport sector. Hence, undergirding the plan’s gradualist approach to route and fleet integration is a project of vehicle and driver registration, driver training, and standards setting and monitoring (MoPWT-DGMLT, 2013). While some of these elements may, over time, be beneficial for the system as a whole, an important implication of this approach is the subordination of the informal sector and the exclusion of transport workers who do not meet state-set standards.

What the two areas do share, however, is a basic material relationship as informal marketplaces that grew on the periphery of infrastructure that was not planned to accommodate them, nor the livelihoods they sustain. As the title of Niasari’s documentary, ‘Under the Bridge,’ suggests, Cola and Dora are located in areas that can be easily bypassed or avoided by car. The two hubs lie on what civil engineers call ‘at-grade’ level, and the two bridges that span over them perform a ‘grade separation’ between two main vehicular flows: over the bridge, the faster moving, inter-city traffic destined for the heart of Beirut, and below, a knot of more-local traffic, where the activities that constitute Cola and Dora as transport hubs take place. ‘Grade separation,’ a mundane method of traffic management, is not without a social effect in this context: the bridges are intended to minimise interruptions to the flow of traffic into the center of Beirut, and hence can be seen as a means of ‘splintering’ two experiences of the city (see Hutchinson, 2000 for similar dynamics in Los Angeles). This is a major reason for my own complete ignorance of Cola before starting my research. For many years, I had driven to the airport and further south without ever realising that Cola was beneath Salim Salam bridge. For anyone who does not navigate the area ‘at-grade,’ this airport route effectively erases Cola from Beirut’s geography.

I wrote these words in secret, after dark, a long time ago. I hesitated when writing these words.